Staff at a garden centre have been told they must sing to their plants to help them to grow.
Chris Bonnett (above), who has a four-acre nursery in Essex and his own online garden centre GardeningExpress.co.uk, is hoping to find out if plants enjoy being serenaded or if gardeners should stick to the chat.
Gardeners have long suspected talking to plants helps them grow and the approach was even advocated by Prince Charles.
Now Chris is aiming to find out if singing to plants helps too – and is even hoping to discover which type of music they like best.
The plants have been divided into six distinct areas so Chris and his team can monitor which approach works best.
One group of plants will be reared in silence, a second group will be talked to daily, a third group will be sung a selection of classic pop songs by staff, a fourth group will be sang a mix of more recent pop hits and a fifth group will be sang hymns each day.
Finally the sixth group of plants will be sung a selection of opera arias throughout the day.
Chris hopes the findings – which he will evaluate at the end of the summer season – will help gardeners devise an approach which will maximize the growth of their plants once and for all.
Chris said: “It’s long been thought that plants thrive if you talk to them but until now no one has ever tried to measure the benefits of singing to them.
“We thought if we could prove a link and identify which type of songs the plants like best them we could help literally millions of gardeners across the globe to get the most out of their plants.”
Classic songs selected include Yesterday by The Beatles, You’re Beautiful by James Blunt, My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston.
More recent pop hits include Baby by Justin Bieber, Single Ladies by Beyonce, and What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction.
Hymns selected for the experiment include Abide With Me, Jerusalem, All Things Bright and Beautiful and Morning Has Broken.
Opera numbers will include Nessun Dorma, Habanera, and O Mio Babbino Caro and Mozart’s Queen of the Night.
Chris said: “We obviously needed to test a group of plants we were singing to against a group we weren’t singing to but once we started planning it we realised we needed to look at different types of music as well so we could find out which stimulates growth the most.
“It’ll be really interesting to find out if Mozart does the trick more than 1D for example.”
